La. superintendent discusses Jindal plan
WALKER — State Education Superintendent John White visited Livingston Parish on Wednesday, where he discussed implications of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposed expansion of a scholarship program for students from low-income households.
Such students who leave public schools under Jindal’s proposal could travel across parish lines to attend private schools, but those schools would not be subject to all of the accountability measures that public schools face, White said.
Students who meet certain financial criteria and who attend public schools that have received a C, D or F in the state’s grade-letter ranking system would be able to use state funds to attend private or parochial schools, according to the governor’s plan.
Critics have labeled the proposal “vouchers” and said that it could affect more than half of the state’s approximately 700,000 students.
White said students who are eligible for the scholarships would be able to cross parish lines to attend schools, and that those students would be tested the same as students in the public schools.
The results of those tests would be published the same as test results for any public schools, but private and parochial schools that accept scholarship students would not receive letter grades as do public schools, White said.
Schools that accept scholarship students would not be allowed to have selective admissions for scholarship students, White said.
“It would be open enrollment,” he said. “There would be no interview.”
The student would receive an amount of money equal to the cost of attending the school, White said. Any excess in state funds would be returned to the student’s originating public school district, he said.
Many details of the plan remain to be worked out, White said, but would become clearer when legislators begin filing bills in March.
To prevent private schools from being founded solely to take advantage of the program, any new school’s scholarship enrollment would be capped at 20 percent, White said.
The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would have to approve each scholarship school, White said.
White made the remarks in front of a small audience of Livingston Parish Chamber of Commerce members at the Literacy and Technology Center in Walker.
White spoke for about 15 minutes and then took questions from the audience. Many of the questions focused on the impact of the proposed Jindal reforms on Livingston Parish. The parish’s school system received a B in the state’s rankings.
“This is a B district, a good district,” White said. “I would like to see it become an A district.”
White praised Livingston Parish’s public education system as a “school of choice” already, pointing to the schools as a major cause of the parish’s rapid growth.
White also discussed the proposed changes in how schools are evaluated, saying that if every student can’t earn an 18 on the ACT, then the school system had failed.
“The best predictor of student proficiency is the ACT,” White said.
State Rep. and former Livingston Parish School Superintendent J. Rogers Pope, R-Denham Springs, who attended the talk, said the proposals are worrying to him.
“The fear that I have is that we will have a lot of schools springing up,” Pope said. “I have got to wait and see the final piece of legislation and the way it’s written.
“I have some concerns, major ones,” Pope said.
Earlier in the day, White visited schools in West Baton Rouge, Central and Watson, where he chatted with principals, teachers and students.